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212 MEMOIRS OF JOSEPH GBIMALDI.
This was the ruin of Bradbury as a pantomimist. He did
not appear again in London for many years, and, although he played occasionally in the country theatres, never afterwards regained his former rank and celebrity in the profession. As far as pecuniary matters were concerned, it did not matter much to him, the annuity affording him a handsome independence; but whether he afterwards sold it and dissipated the money, or whether the annuity itself was discontinued in the course of years, this at least is certain, that when he died, which he did in London, in 1828, he was in very indifferent circximstances, if not in actual want.
In October, Coyent Garden commenced the new campaign,
and brought forward " Mother Goose," which ran, with the same degree of success as before, until nearly Christmas, and was played altogether twenty-nine times.
On the 15th of this month, a most frightful accident occurred
at Sadler's "Wells. The pantomime was played first that night, which, joined to his haying nothing to do at Coyent Garden, enabled Grimaldi to go home early to bed. At midnight he was awakened by a great noise in. the street, and loud and repeated knocks at the door of his house: at first he concluded it might be some idle party amusing themselves by knocking and running away; an intellectual amusement not at that time exclusively confined to a few gentlemen of high degree; but finding that it was repeated, and that the noise without increased, he hastily slipped on a morning-gown and trowsers, and hurried to the street-door.
The people who were clamouring outside, were for the most
part friends, who exclaimed, when he appeared, that they had merely come to assure themselves of Ms personal safety, and were rejoiced to find .that he had escaped. He now learned, for the first time, that some vagabonds in the pit of the theatre had raised a cry of " Eire!" during, the performance of the last piece, "The Ocean Fiend," and that the audience had risen |
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